


Airplanes

by fairyuphoria



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Death, Domestic, M/M, Mourning, Other, Parents, daughter - Freeform, parent!phan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-27 03:44:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6268207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairyuphoria/pseuds/fairyuphoria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Iris, Dan and Phil’s daughter, is taking Dan’s death extremely hard, even though it happened years ago, it’s just now hitting her that she’ll never get her father back. She writes a song one night to remember him.<br/>The song belongs to Local Natives, I do not own it, although so lyrics are changed to fit a lil better (-:<br/>Warnings: Mentions of major character death, swearing, maybe depression? let me know if I missed anything</p>
            </blockquote>





	Airplanes

**Summary:** Iris, Dan and Phil’s daughter, is taking Dan’s death extremely hard, even though it happened years ago, it’s just now hitting her that she’ll never get her father back. She writes a song one night to remember him.   
The song belongs to Local Natives, I do not own it, although so lyrics are changed to fit a lil better (-:  
**Warnings:** Mentions of major character death, swearing, maybe depression? let me know if I missed anything  
**Word Count:** 1.5k

Iris’ knees dug into the carpet of her floor, making them ache the longer she kept them tucked under her, but she didn’t care, not in this moment. Books, folders, boxes, lay out before her, sprawled around his in a circle and it’s all too painful to look at. Boxes she never dare open, full of memories, of unanswered questions, of photos, of love, of death, it all lingered around her now, resting on her shoulder, and catching on her eyelashes, it was all presented before her, and her chest ached. It has been five years, five years of blank stares and the feeling of guilt when she never felt anything when he was brought up, but now, this feeling was new, staring at him through lamented photo paper, he stared back, unaltered. 

It wasn’t like she didn’t care for him, or wasn’t sad about his death, it just never seemed to hit her as hard as it hit everyone else, it was a feeling of numbness, like being outside in the cold for too long, and the tip of your nose and ears disappear with the snow. She was only eleven, so she didn’t really realize exactly what was going on, she knew daddy wasn’t coming back, but she thought of it more as a long vacation, that he’d eventually return from someday, not the permanency of death. There was always a tug in her stomach telling her that he’d come back someday, and maybe that’s what caused her indifference to the topic. Maybe she just didn’t want to accept it. 

But now, sixteen, sat on her bedroom floor at one in the morning, surrounded by paper memories, it’s hard for it not to all come crashing into her like hurricane waves. Five years worth of grieving, flooding into her arms, pooling in her lungs, resurfacing on her waterline, threatening to spill down her freckled cheeks. It was all coming back, each item, each photograph brought back feelings she thought she had forgotten about a person she had thought she’d forgotten. 

A thin disposable picture balanced between her thumb and index finger now, and she stared at the three people, her fathers looking much younger, with longer haircuts that covered their foreheads, with a blue-eyed ginger slotted between them, who smiled, one hand placed upon her swollen stomach. She could hear her fathers voice now. 

‘That’s your Papa and I, with your surrogate mother, Gemma, a week before you were born, we were so excited to meet you,’ He smiled down at her, placed in his lap, big hazel eyes wide with curiosity. 

‘Surrogate?” Iris mumbled, eyebrow scrunched. Her father laughed, nodding. 

‘Yes, since me and Papa couldn’t have you on our own, we wanted to find someone who kinda looked like Papa so we could make you, Gemma helped us, we couldn’t have gotten luckier,’ His eyes melted with warmth, before reaching in to tickle her, the memory faded and left Iris with shaking hands.

In her lap laid a pair of chopsticks, where a small ribbon with a paper attached, was tied tightly around the middle. In messy handwriting, the black ink read, From our Wedding Day, a small branch of what looks like might have once been cherry blossoms where tied in with the wooden sticks. Tears were flowing freely down her cheeks as she realizes the aching in her chest won’t stop, and it was something she always chosen to ignore, to ignore her father’s passing. 

“He’s not coming back,” She whispered through sobs, clutching one of the tshirts packed away in boxes to her chest, and it smelt like him, a smell she had blocked from her mind, but with the whiff it brought back everything she had been suppressing. Forehead kisses when she left for school, riding on his shoulders when they went to Disneyland every Summer with Grandma and Grandpa, him teaching her to play piano. Her breath was labored now, heaving through heavy lungs and a constricted chest, her tear filled eyes trailed to look at the old piano sat next to her dark window. On shaky legs, she stands, lifting a hand up to wipe the tears from under her glasses, then sitting on the leather bench, before she knew it her fingers plucked out chords that echoed in the room with her own soft cries. 

_The piano where you sit inside of a  
frame made of, made of, of wood_

Her eyes trailed up as she croaked out the words, landing on the wooden picture frame balanced on the top of the piano, inside a picture of him, his hair curling at the end, and Iris was sat in his lap, they were both facing this very piano, his dimple indention into his face, lips parted into a smile.

 _I keep those chopsticks you had from when_  
you got married in Japan  
  
I love it all so much  
I call  
I want you back, back, back  
You back

Her voice broke as she sang, and she could’ve sworn she was yelling now, the hole in her chest aching and pulling. She missed his smile, she missed his encouraging words, she missed the bed time stores, god, she missed him so much. She just wanted her father back.   
  
_I did not know you as well_  
_as my father, father knew you_

Her dad’s eye’s came to her mind now, how the blue seemed to chip like old paint, and his smile not nearly as bright. He was her dad, and he was the best one she could ask for, but she knew that when she found him asleep on the couch with their book in hand, his eyes looking just a bit too suspiciously puffy, that he reminiscences of him more. It was rare we talked of him, but when he did come into conversation, his mouth parted ever so slightly, and vision pointed down, he’d talk about how beautiful he was, how talented, how opinionated, and how much he loved Iris and him. Iris remembers now, two weeks after the funeral, when she was staying at her Grandmothers, that her dad came home, stumbling, hair a mess and tear tracks down his cheeks.

‘I’m here to get Iris, we’re going home, we have to go see Dan, Dan’s home and he wants to see his daughter,’ His words were choppy and broken off and everything about him screamed broken. 

‘Phil, Dan’s dead, you can’t take Iris home right now, you’re drunk,’ Her grandma said softly, placing a gentle hand on his arm, which he quickly shook off, staring at her wildly. 

‘He’s not dead!’ He yelled, fists balled at his sides. ‘He’s not dead! He can’t be dead, not Dan, he’s not dead,’ This was when he fell into his mothers chest, sobs wracking over his body, and they sank to the kitchen floor. Grandma was crying now too. 

‘He didn’t deserve to go so early, Phil, but you know he loved you so much, he loved you and Iris with all of his heart, he would’ve done anything for you two, he didn’t deserve to die,’ She whispered into his ear. 

 _Every question you took the_  
_time to sit and look it up,_  
_look it up in the encyclopedia_

‘Daddy, what do praying mantis's’ eat?” Dan looked down at Iris from his spot on the couch, her head tilted slightly to the side and blue glasses beginning to slip dangerously close to falling off her small face. 

‘Hm, I’m not sure, why don’t we see, come ‘ere,’ He patted the grey couch next to him, opening up another tab on the computer as the four year old climbed onto the couch, blonde curls tickling Dan’s arm as she did so. They spent an hour and a half learning about insect diets.   
  
_I love it all_  
_So much I call_  
_I want you back, back, back_  
_You back_  
  
_It sounds like we_  
_would have had a great deal to say, to say_  
_to each other_  
_I bet when I leave_  
_my body for the sky the wait,_  
_the wait will be worth it_  
  
_I love it all_  
_So much I call_  
_I want you back, back, back_  
_You back_

One last loud sob erupted from her mouth as she finished, hunching over the piano, tears collecting on the keys, where her fingers rest. 

“I miss him too,” The deep voice sighed, and there stood her dad, his black hair pushed back from his face, eyes full of sleep, framed by glasses, and tears silently rolling down his cheeks and into light stubble.

“I just want him back, I miss him so much, why’d he have to die, I want my dad back,” She was now wrapped around Phil, and their aching hearts welding into one, his eyes trailing to the pile of things on the floor, things he swore to himself he’d never look at again after he had packed them away, now laid on the floor before him. His own memories began to resurface, he missed his husband, the father of his daughter, the love of his life, his best friend. 

“I want him back too.”

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed, I got the idea for this last night when I was driving at like midnight and this song came on and idk why I always gotta write about death but oh well. I came real close to crying when I was writing this. Srry if it’s rushed or not that well written, I wrote this prtty quickly, but I hope you still liked it!


End file.
